about two years ago we, a group of activists and academics, started the project of creating a “Critical Atlas“. Some of us are part of http://orangotango.info/, others of http://kritische-geographie-berlin.de/. We were overwhelmed by the general response, the number of maps that reached us and by the interest in the project which does not seem to decrease. We are writing this newsletter, to keep you up to date, to inform you about our next steps and to ask for your support.

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We are slow (but steady wins the race 😉

All of us involved in the editing process are working voluntarily on the “Critical Atlas” alongside with (ir)regular wage labor, studies, research projects, activism, cultural activities etc., that’s why the editing process is advancing not too fast.

For more detailed information on the following points, please see the correspondingparagraphs.

The selection of the maps is concluded. We selected nearly 50 contributions – trying to bring together different approaches of counter cartographies.

Alongside with the Atlas, there will be a website. Everyone interested in the Atlas will be able to download the book free of charge.

We financed the Atlas? We received money from Transformap, Foundation Antstiftung as well as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Currently we are looking for a publisher – any hints on who might be interested in publishing the Atlas are welcome.

Do you want to support us? We need help in proofreading, as most of the contributors are not native English speakers … If you are interested, keep on reading!

The selection of the entries is concluded!

During the last year we read through all the maps / texts / projects and selected nearly 50 contributions. We tried bring together different approaches to counter cartographies. Thereby, some regions and topics are more represented than others. We assume that this has two reasons: first, our network did not reach all regions and second critical cartography is not a popular discipline in every part of the world. Anyway, we are very happy with the maps we have received and the selection we managed to make. Among others, this selection includes maps / texts / projects about resistance against mega mining in Argentina (Iconoclasistas), mapping of a refugee camp in Lebanon (Balloon Mapping), indigenous territorial struggles in Brasil (Nova Cartografia da Amazonia), digital inequalities (Mark Graham), sexual harassment in Kairo (Harass Map), the Environmental Justice Atlas, Paracartography (John Krygier & Denis Wood), commercialization of possible public space (Philippe Rekacewicz) and militant mapping (Counter Cartographies Collective). Besides the maps and projects, we gathered contributions for a “manual chapter”. We would like to understand the Atlas not only as a book that exhibits critical maps and projects, but also as a medium to motivate people to make their own maps.

There will be a new website!

Currently we are curating the contributions and putting everything together into an Atlas. Alongside with the book we want to publish a website on which the maps / projects / texts can be seen and the Atlas downloaded for free. Meanwhile you can check out the current webpage: http://kritische-karten.net/

We financed the Atlas?

We applied for funding at different foundations and received already money from Transformap, the Foundation Antstiftung and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Besides we are planning on a Crowdfunding campaign and keep applying for money from various foundations. If you have any hints which foundation could be suitable to support the Atlas financially or ideally, please let us know.

We’d like support with finding a publisher!

As we received so many contributions and positive feedback we are optimistic that the “Critical Atlas” is going to be a success. At the moment we are searching for a good publisher. We finished the first dummy of the Atlas and are already in contact with some publishers, but we still need support. If you have any recommendations regarding possible publishers, please let us know.

Interested in proofreading?

Finally, we reach out for your help to support us in proofreading the contributions. The Atlas will be published in English. However, English is not the native language for many of the authors. So if you know anybody interested in supporting us with proofreading, let us know.

That’s it for now. If you have any questions, suggestions or critique, please contact us! Best wishes from Berlin, The Editors

The critical atlas is still alive. At the moment we are working on a new homepage. We further are spending a lot of time on editing the contributions and putting everything in an Atlas together. Meanwhile please check out our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/critical.atlas/

The research group ESpacio – TEcnología – PArticipación ESTEPA (space,
technology, and participation), of the Geography department of the
‘Universidad Nacional de Colombia’ organizes an “International workshop for the creation of cartographies of participation, grassroots management, and the
empowerment of local territories”. The event will take place from
October 20-22, 2016 in Bogotá, Colombia.

This call is intended to foster collaborations between activists (NGOs, think tanks, social movements, or community grassroots organisations, etc.) and the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice project (ejatlas.org). The aims is to support action-research on environmental justice and campaigns or ongoing work in the field, and create public and educational materials dedicated to documenting and unveiling processes of destructive extractivism and dispossession.

About the EJATLAS and ACKnowl-EJ project:

The EJAtlas is an online database and interactive map that documents socio-environmental conflicts, defined as mobilizations by local communities against particular economic activities whereby environmental impacts are a key element of their grievances. It is based on the work of hundreds of collaborators, from the academy, concerned citizens, informal committees, NGOs and other activist groups, who have been documenting environmental and social injustice and supporting communities on the ground for years. It’s been mainly developed under EJOLT, a research project coordinated at ICTA – UAB, and will now continue under the ACKnowl-EJ international project.

The ACKnowl-EJ project (Academic-Activist Co-Produced Knowledge for Environmental Justice) builds on and broadens the Atlas of Environmental Justice. This project emphasizes the transformative potential of citizen movements, ‘participatory’ approaches to environmental politics, and new institutional practices born from diverse knowledge systems, showing how alternatives are often born from resistance. ACKnowl-EJ is a 3 year project funded by the International Social Science Council, coordinated by the Institute of Sciences and Technologies of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Dr. Leah Temper) and Kalpavriksh action group from India (Ashish Kothari).

This call aims to expand the EJATLAs and foster the development of powerful featured maps (see for instance the featured map on Mining Conflicts in Latin America, to support the international day against Chevron Texaco or to denounce the expansion of fracking). It aims to engage in further experimentation on collaborative research and co-production of knowledge for social change.

Contribute to improve the coverage of the EJAtlas geographically and
thematically

Design Featured Maps to support EJ related campaign. The EJAtlas and Acknowl-EJ project will offer support to technically develop them and to disseminate the work developed under this call.

What are the small projects about:

Adding cases to the EJAtlas to complete a specific database and create new Featured Maps (see the EJATLAS database form)

Producing relevant featured maps.

Designing original Featured Maps and searching for relevant GIS data, stories, images or infographics to display on the map.

Presenting a plan for research, dissemination, campaigning with the produced map
The project must be completed before December 2016.

2-4 Small contracts of between 1000-1500 euros will be granted in this round. The amount of the contract will vary according to the proposed project.

Who can present a proposal?

This call is meant for civil society organizations and networks that work on Environmental Justice related struggles around the world. Organizations from any country are invited to present a small project. Applicants must be able to issue an invoice. Proposals can be submitted and developed in English and/or Spanish.
Other languages can be considered, but will need to be translated to English or Spanish.

How can you apply?

Please send your application to ejoltmap@gmail.com with the subject
“political ecology cartography” and the following documents:

We would like to introduce a collective which currently is and has been since 2014 showing a wide variety of mapping productions on many different topics and regions. Within these different productions many of the basic premises of critical cartography can be recognized.

“The Decolonial Atlas, started in 2014, is an attempt to bring together maps which, in some way, challenge our relationships with the land, people, and state. It is based on the premise that there is no such thing as “truth” in cartography. Only interpretation. The orientation of a map, its projection, the presence of political borders, which features are included or excluded, and the language used to label a map are all subject to the map-maker’s agenda. Because most maps in use today serve to reinforce colonial understandings of the Earth, we are consciously creating maps which help us to re-imagine the world – to decolonize.”

This year we had already two editors workshop of the Critical Atlas. Apart from people working on the Atlas for 1.5 years we welcomed some new people who want to contribute to the project. Besides from organizing stuff in and around the project, we tried to find a structure for the Atlas. Thanks to the overwhelming feedback from all over the world it won’t be easy to bring things together. We are working on it and will keep you updated.

Attached you’ll see some photos of our organized mess. Thanks for sticking with us.

“Cartography Is Dead (Thank God!) Let’s admit it. Cartography is dead. And then let’s thank our lucky stars that after the better part of a century mapmaking is freeing itself from the dead hand of academia.”

Taken from a nice article by Denis Wood (2003). Worth reading. http://makingmaps.owu.edu/mm/cartographydead.pdf